Tucker's Crossing by Marina Adair Read Free Book Online Page A

son a daddy. Even at the cost of her heart.
    Jake sank back in the booth and spooned at the ice cream, his ready smile from a moment ago gone. “Why did he have to come back now?”
    Why indeed. “I don’t know, sweetie. Maybe because he was finally ready to.”
    “He didn’t seem ready to me. Seemed like he wanted us gone.”
    That he did. Wasn’t going to happen though. “I just don’t think he was expecting us to be there is all. We surprised him.”
    “I hate surprises.”
    “I know.” Shelby placed a hand over his, struck again by how similar Cody and Jake were. He let her hold it for a minute but quickly snatched it back when Faith reappeared.
    “I’m guessing he found his appetite after all.” The waitress took in the empty bowl and winked at Shelby. “I’ll take the licked-clean appearance as a compliment to the chef.”
    Jake scrubbed the leftovers off his face with the back of his hand. “It isn’t Ms. Luella’s. But it’s close.”
    “Don’t you let Mrs. McKinney hear you say that. The last man that compared those two women’s baking, and found Mrs. McKinney lacking, wound up hog-tied to the church flagpole. On a Sunday.” Faith leaned in and whispered—Jake eating up every word. “Wearing nothing but his tighty-whities and peach pie.”
    “No way.”
    “Yes, way,” Shelby confirmed. “She went on to take first place in the Summer Sweet Spectacular pie cook-off that year. And those two women have been going back and forth, swapping first and second place, ever since. If Mrs. McKinney wins the pie portion, Ms. Luella’s chili receives the blue ribbon.”
    “If you ask me, the judges are just too scared to do anything else,” Faith laughed.
    Jake’s eyes widened. “But that’s cheating.”
    “Maybe so, JT.” Faith shrugged. “But in a town this size, and with those women, it’s also called smart. Not sure what they’ll do this year with the pie portion being canceled.”
    Shelby looked around The B-Cubed, took in the silver pole, mechanical bull, the country-style dance floor, and found herself relaxing a little. Even smiling. Some forty years back, Bartholomew McKinney, fourth-generation owner of The Bluebonnet up and died, buck naked, in the arms of a woman who was definitely not Mrs. McKinney.
    The men in town broke out into a riot, one worthy of calling in the National Guard, when Mrs. McKinney, Sunday school teacher and woman scorned, discovered her husband’s family business had more to do with debauchery than doing people’s taxes, and turned the county’s only strip club into an actual eating establishment that followed health codes. They tried to persuade her, shut down her business, run her out of town, anything to get their “gentleman’s” club back.
    It only took a few weeks, a public statement that she would be releasing her husband’s clientele list, and one bite of her buttermilk biscuits with sweet-hot pepper jelly to win the townsmen back. And she’d ruled the Sweet Plains culinary world ever since.
    “Gina said this year the judging will be impartial and fair. She refuses to be bullied.”
    “Mark my words, she’ll cave. They all do. Only a crazy person would be stupid enough to take on a woman defending what’s hers,” Faith added.
    “You are absolutely right, Faith.” Shelby smiled. Cody might be stubborn but folks knew he wasn’t stupid. Surely he’d see that she wasn’t going to back down.

Chapter 4
    “Whoa, boy.” Cody pulled back on the reins, his Thoroughbred, Goliath, slowing to a stop. He was about three miles east of the ranch when he crested the hill and saw a sight for sore eyes. Steers. Hundreds of head of cattle dotted the valley below, chewing the grass and fighting over the sparse shade.
    It was barely eight and the temperature was already threatening to suffocate him. The heat wave that had moved in and dried up their entire county hadn’t broken, and it wasn’t expected to any time soon. So why were the cows holing up